• DHS returns Saddam Hussein’s sword to Iraq

    A ceremonial sword taken from the office of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was returned to Iraq Monday. It appears the sword was taken from Saddam’s office by an American soldier, who last year gave it to an auction house to sell. DHS agents seized the sword in January 2012, after it had been sold but before money changed hands.

  • Turmoil in Turkey is about the future identity of the country

    The demonstrations in Istanbul began as a neighborhood protest against the government’s plan to build a shopping mall on the site of a popular park. Soon, however, the demonstrations spread to other cities, and spokespeople for the demonstrators emphasized that the park issue was symbolic, and that it stood for deeper issues. This growing unrest may yet unleash deeper forces within Turkish society.

  • White House closer to decision on providing arms to rebels in Syria

    White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to deny reports that President Barack Obama is seriously considering providing arms and other military gear to rebel groups in Syria. The president last year said that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would constitute crossing of a “red line” and would be a game changer.” Still, haunted by how false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq led to the 2003 invasion of the country, the Obama administration appears to demand a higher level of evidence about the chemical weapon use in Syria.

  • Arab League’s Mid East peace proposal accepts Israel’s position on borders

    In a major coup for the Obama administration, representatives of the Arab League announced Monday in Washington that they were reaffirming two earlier initiatives by the league to end the Arab-Israeli conflict – and made the current peace proposal even more acceptable to Israel.

  • U.S., South Korea delay nuclear fuel deal

    The president of South Korea, Park Geun-Hye, has been campaigning to get the United States to lift the ban on South Korea from enriching uranium and processing spent nuclear fuel. The ban was part of a 1972 treaty, which was set to expire next March. A deal appeared to be on the way at some point this year, but officials from both countries said the deadline would be extended to 2016. What did not help the negotiations were statements by some South Korean officials that the country should build its own nuclear weapons reather than rely on U.S. nuclear umbrella.

  • U.S., China in high-level military talks

    Representatives of China and the United States met on Monday for the highest-level military talks between the two counties in almost two years. In the meeting, a senior Chinese general pledged to work with the United States on cybersecurity because the effects of a major cyber attack “may be as serious as a nuclear bomb.”

  • China catches 12 times more fish beyond its waters than it reports

    Chinese fishing boats catch about $11.5 billion worth of fish from beyond their country’s own waters each year — and most of it goes unreported. Researchers estimate Chinese foreign fishing at 4.6 million tons per year, taken from the waters of at least ninety countries — including 3.1 million tons from African waters, mainly West Africa.

  • DHS helps tear down technological “Tower of Babel” along U.S. borders

    First responders and international officials on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border had been preparing since last fall for the Canada-U.S. Enhance Resiliency Experiment (CAUSE) — demonstrating the ability to exchange information between local, state, provincial, and national systems and software applications. With these preparations, a recent joint experiment held in Maine and New Brunswick proved that even across borders, any immediate confusion or lack of information following an incident should not greatly affect overall rescue efforts.

  • Israel and Turkey end acrimony, normalize relations

    In a major coup for the Obama administration’s Middle East policy, Turkey and Israel have today (Friday) announced that they were putting an end to the increasing acrimony which has characterized their relationship since 2006, acrimony which has intensified even further in May 2010, when Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish citizens who were on a flotilla which tried to break the Israeli maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. The normalization of relations between the two staunchest U.S. allies in the region would make it easier to establish a U.S.-Israel-Sunni Arab coalition to contain Iran and thwart its hegemonic designs in the region, and will tighten the coordination among Syria’s neighbors as the civil war in Syria enters its final phase, and as preparations for post-Assad Syria are undertaken in earnest.

  • Final U.S. infrastructure report offers a sober message

    In its fifth and final report on the state of U.S. infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has a sober message for elected officials, policy makers, businesses, and general public: unless the United States invests an additional $1.57 billion per year in infrastructure — drinking water and waste water, electricity, airports, seaports and waterways, and surface transportation — between now and 2020, the nation will lose $3.1 trillion in GNP (gross national product), $1.1 trillion in trade, a $3,100 per year drop in personal disposable income, $2.4 trillion in lost consumer spending, and a little over 3.1 million jobs.

     

  • France gains international backing, faces complicated situation on the ground

    France on Monday received a unanimous support from all members of the UN Security Council for the military action French forces have initiated last Friday against Islamists in Mali. On the ground, the situation is more complicated. The Islamists were driven out of one town south of the demarcation line between north and South Mali, but on Monday they managed to send another column south toward the town of Diabaly, on the western side of the Niger River, located 250 miles from the capital Bamako. French general admitted that the Islamists rebels are better-equipped and better-organized than initial estimates indicated. France faces a choice: send French ground troops to fight the Islamists in the north, or wait until late summer for a reconstructed Mali army and a West Africa multi-national force to conduct the ground war necessary to evict the Islamists from north Mali.

  • Egypt’s president Morsi used blatantly anti-Semitic language in 2010 speech, TV interview

    President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt used blatantly anti-Semitic language in a speech and in a TV interview – both in 2010, when he was a top official of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. The speech and the TV interview were video-taped, and just came to light.

  • Israel’s isolation grows

    Last Thursday UN General Assembly vote to upgrade the status of the Palestinian Authority to that of a non-state observer highlighted the growing isolation in which Israel finds itself as a result of its policies toward the Palestinians; Israel’s isolation is only going to grow: in response to Israel’s decision to make preparations to build 3,000 housing units in a sensitive area east of Jerusalem,  France and the United Kingdom are now considering recalling their ambassadors from Tel Aviv for consultations

  • Himalayan glaciers retreating at an uneven rate, making South Asia water supply future unclear

    MI6, the U.K. intelligence service, four years ago predicted that the world’s first water war – that is, war between countries over access to water resources — will take place between India and Bangladesh sometime between 2015 and 2020; the reason for the war: intensifying conflicts over dwindling Himalayas water sources; glaciers in the eastern and central regions of the Himalayas appear to be retreating at accelerating rates, similar to those in other areas of the world, while glaciers in the western Himalayas are more stable and could be growing, a new report says

  • Toilet Challenge, 1: Caltech’s solar-powered toilet wins Reinvent Toilet Challenge

    The World Health Organization reports that 2.5 billion people around the globe are without access to sanitary toilets, which results in the spread of deadly diseases; every year, 1.5 million people, mostly those under the age of five, die from diarrhea; Caltech scientist awarded grant to develop solar-powered sanitation system